The first official crossover episode in the PRU was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Season 3's "A Friend in Need", which was a crossover with the yet-to-be-launched Masked Rider, Saban's 'Americanized' version of Kamen Rider.

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A Friend in Need was intended to be a crossover when it was made, but since they never made a show featuring the Masked Rider who met the Power Rangers, there was never anything for it to crossover over with.

A Friend in Need was intended to be a crossover when it was made, but since they never made a show featuring the Masked Rider who met the Power Rangers, there was never anything for it to crossover over with.

A Friend in Need was intended to be a crossover when it was made, but since they never made a show featuring the Masked Rider who met the Power Rangers, there was never anything for it to crossover over with.

Masked Rider wasn't that bad, at least by the low standards set by Power Rangers at the time. (And yes, I'm aware now that it mangled its source material even more radically than PR did, but I had no knowledge of that at the time. All I knew was that, while I didn't enjoy it as much as PR, I enjoyed it more than the other PR knockoffs that came along around that time, from Saban or otherwise.) In particular, I loved the fact that it had real orchestral music rather than a rock score like MMPR or the faux-orchestral synth scores of later PR seasons (or most modern TV shows, for that matter). I remember that "A Friend in Need" also had a largely orchestral score, probably tracked from the upcoming MR series, and it was surprising to hear orchestral music underscoring scenes of the Power Rangers in action.

And I have to admit, I didn't entirely hate Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation. I just think it was a mistake to cross it over with Power Rangers, especially given how awkwardly they did it. It was the kind of kids'-show crossover where both casts are somehow already fully aware of each other's existence, as if they watched each other's shows. Which annoyed me no end, since it made no sense in-universe that the Rangers would've already known about the Turtles' existence in the first place, let alone have known all their names and reacted to meeting them as though they were celebrities.

Two things:
1) RPM's original showrunner, Eddie Guzelian, and its chief writer, John Tellegan, both stated that the season took place in a separate continuity from the rest of the PRU, but it is also possible to place the season in the mainstream PRU at some point between the years of 2025 (S.P.D.) and 3000 (Time Force); the reason for placing RPM before Time Force is because it explains the existence of the wastelands outside Millenium City (TF's base of operations) as revealed in Reinforcements from the Future.

2) I called "A Friend in Need" a crossover, but, technically, it's more of a 'backdoor pilot' of sorts, since it was aired/produced prior to the beginning of Masked Rider, and introduced the characters of Dex, Dregan, and Dregan's army, and set up Dex's reasons for heading to Earth, as seen in Masked Rider itself.

A Friend in Need was intended to be a crossover when it was made, but since they never made a show featuring the Masked Rider who met the Power Rangers, there was never anything for it to crossover over with.

2) I called "A Friend in Need" a crossover, but, technically, it's more of a 'backdoor pilot' of sorts, since it was aired/produced prior to the beginning of Masked Rider, and introduced the characters of Dex, Dregan, and Dregan's army, and set up Dex's reasons for heading to Earth, as seen in Masked Rider itself.

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You were more or less right until you said "as seen in Masked Rider itself". What happened in the MR show had absolutely nothing to do with what happened in A Friend in Need. While AFiN was originally intended to be a backdoor pilot, during production of MR Saban decided to keep the show in its own separate continuity (due to PR's declining popularity at the time). Just watch the first MR episode, and this will become quite obvious.

Just because it's an out-of-continuity crossover doesn't mean it isn't a crossover. There have been other cases of crossovers that were not acknowledged in the continuity of one or the other of the participating shows. Indeed, there's even precedent for a spinoff series altering the continuity assumptions of the backdoor pilot it's based on -- for instance, when Robin Williams first appeared as Mork on Happy Days, it turned out to be a dream at the end, but the character was popular enough that they retconned him into reality and gave him his own show.

The first official crossover episode in the PRU was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Season 3's "A Friend in Need", which was a crossover with the yet-to-be-launched Masked Rider, Saban's 'Americanized' version of Kamen Rider.

"True Blue to the Rescue" started the trend/tradition of the current team of Rangers teaming up with their immediate predecessors (either in part or in full), while "Always a Chance" started the trend/tradition of the current team of Rangers teaming up with Rangers who were not their immediate predecessors (a trend continued in "Forever Red" and "Once a Ranger").

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Seasons 1 and 2, Power Rangers Turbo, Power Rangers Ninja Storm, Power Rangers Mystic Force, Power Rangers Jungle Fury, and Power Rangers RPM did not feature crossover episodes of any kind.

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While Mystic Force never featured a ranger crossover, they did have Ziggy-the street hood alien from SPD, show up and encounter the MF gang, establishing his presence on Earth.

A Friend in Need was intended to be a crossover when it was made, but since they never made a show featuring the Masked Rider who met the Power Rangers, there was never anything for it to crossover over with.

Power Rangers in Space also did a crossover with Saban's Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation, though it's probably best to forget that.

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And you didn't think it was best to forget Saban's Masked Rider? LOL

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Zing!

Two things I liked about the PR/Masked Rider pilot:
1. We finally met a superhero in the PR verse that otherwise wasn't connected to the Rangers at all. It added a great sense of variety to a universe they were the only rangers; this was before the Alien Rangers, and even then, they were Rangers. I like variety, and it was neat to see that

2. Though Tommy and Rocky were holding back, the show essentially (and perhaps unintentionally) maintained the unspoken rule in Japan that Kamen/Masked Rider = one Sentai/Power Ranger team, or at least multiple sentai/ranger heroes. The real world logic would be that the stunts and feats we see attributed to an entire team of Rangers would be essentially duplicated and compressed into one Rider b/c of the nature of the Rider show. In the PR/MR episode, Masked Rider fought pretty evenly with the combined Red Ranger & Sixth Ranger, traditionally the two strongest rangers (I say traditionally because I don't think Rocky was supposed to have that status despite being Red, but hey, go with me here).

Just because it's an out-of-continuity crossover doesn't mean it isn't a crossover. There have been other cases of crossovers that were not acknowledged in the continuity of one or the other of the participating shows.

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Fair enough.

Indeed, there's even precedent for a spinoff series altering the continuity assumptions of the backdoor pilot it's based on -- for instance, when Robin Williams first appeared as Mork on Happy Days, it turned out to be a dream at the end, but the character was popular enough that they retconned him into reality and gave him his own show.

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Bad example. Mork was always real. He only made Richie think it was a dream. Remember, after Richie wakes up, Mork shows up at the Cunningham's door pretending to be somebody (a guy asking for directions or something). After that we see him making his call to Orsen.

I have to admit to a fondness for MMPR because that was the first one I really saw and the first one which caught the UK by storm. When the first movie came out at its height of greatness here I remember some pretty favourable reviews. Which brings me to my question I guess...

The series have always felt a bit cheap and the costumes....well theyre not exactly amazing imho. The movie costumes were a real step up. Why didnt they continue (even into the 2nd movie) with those armoured suits? They looked really good.

The series have always felt a bit cheap and the costumes....well theyre not exactly amazing imho. The movie costumes were a real step up. Why didnt they continue (even into the 2nd movie) with those armoured suits? They looked really good.

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Because the movie suits were crap and fell apart during the filming of the movie.
Using them in the second movie wouldn't have worked anyway, because it was in the same continuity as the show, not some irrelevant alternate world adventure like the first movie.

Bad example. Mork was always real. He only made Richie think it was a dream. Remember, after Richie wakes up, Mork shows up at the Cunningham's door pretending to be somebody (a guy asking for directions or something). After that we see him making his call to Orsen.

In the original ABC broadcast of this episode, the last scene where we saw Robin Williams was when he appeared as a normal guy on Richie's porch after he woke up from his dream. The episode ended with some gag at Arnold's about UFOs. When ABC ran that episode for the second time the following August, after Mork & Mindy was announced for the fall schedule, they added a scene at the end. Mork talks to Orson and tells him that he made everyone forget about him, let Fonzie go, and was heading off for a mission in the year 1978.

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I saw the episode when it was first broadcast, and it definitely ended as a dream. I distinctly remember being aware of the contradiction when it was announced that Mork was getting his own spinoff. The only thing I didn't remember was that they later added a new scene to the Happy Days episode to reconcile it. Maybe I never saw the rerun.

The series have always felt a bit cheap and the costumes....well theyre not exactly amazing imho. The movie costumes were a real step up. Why didnt they continue (even into the 2nd movie) with those armoured suits? They looked really good.

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Because the movie suits were crap and fell apart during the filming of the movie.
Using them in the second movie wouldn't have worked anyway, because it was in the same continuity as the show, not some irrelevant alternate world adventure like the first movie.

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^ This. The Red Ranger outfit from the movie is on display in a store at Disney World, and it's clearly seen better days. One wonders if they LITERALLY put it through a grinder in the interm for some reason, or they simply fell apart due to shoddy construction.

I'm long-since removed from watching anything PR, and SPD was the last season I really liked. I'm glad it's coming back though, it somehow feels comforting to have around and know people are enjoying it, even if I'm not. Kinda like The Simpsons. :P

I'm not sure if anyone here is a fan of That Guy With the Glasses, but TheSpoonyOne is running a new show called the Deadliest Character. In this parody of the Deadlist Warrior he pits two fictional characters against each other, accompanied by a fantastic animation of the fight, and each character is defended by a guest star. The first (and only) episode so far is Mechagodzilla defended by The Angry Video Game Nerd vs. the original Megazord defended by Linkara.

Oh my gods, I loathed that one. The worst of the bunch. The new US footage was just a lame high-school sitcom that had no real connection to the Japanese Gridman footage, so that the "cyberspace" battle sequences could've been interchangeably inserted into any episode. So it felt repetitive and pointless.